rndmize

42 ms·

331.
by rndmize 14y ago
I'm fairly sure the 40 hour week is far from arbitrary. There's someone on HN who has a long post about working hours and the wide variety of studies that were done demonstrating that 40 hours resulted in higher efficiency than 50 or more a
332.
by rndmize 14y ago
> Civilization has made us docile, but we’re still the same people underneath, and a change in circumstance could send us back into that primitive state. To quote The Art of Looking Sideways: “Civilization is chaos taking a rest.” I do
333.
by rndmize 14y ago
Must support a large military? I think not. We choose to support a large military, far above what is necessary. And for the questions of scale, I don't really see the relevance. Forgive me if I'm wrong on this, but don't states already do t
334.
by rndmize 14y ago
Benevolent dictators strike me as the best form of government at any level so long as they are capable, just, and benevolent - a rare combination it seems. National geographic had an article a few years ago on Singapore that provides some p
335.
by rndmize 14y ago
I was curious, so I did a quick search - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3313282?start=0&tst...
336.
by rndmize 14y ago
There was a time where the idea that people would be able to work less due to robots and machines was thought to be the way of the future - what happened to that?
337.
Jerry Brown: California's deficit is gone(sfgate.com)
1 points by rndmize 14y ago|0 comments
338.
by rndmize 14y ago
Oh man, does that petition start by comparing taking someone's life and livelihood to constructing a new building? Honestly now. The Bay Area feels like a typical tragedy of the common scenario - no one likes the absurd housing prices, or e
339.
by rndmize 14y ago
Happiness, health and stability are not core objectives of our society. The production of wealth, as measured by GDP, or by the stock markets, or consumer spending, is our yardstick of success. I hope that in the remainder of the century we
340.
by rndmize 14y ago
I have a hard time seeing this. If one side can field robotic armies, what stops the other (poorer) side from deploying massive jammers (or lots of small ones)? > You really don't want to be a freedom fighter in the year 2050. Or piss o
341.
by rndmize 14y ago
Not intelligently aware of themselves? In what way? There was little difference between what they knew and how they acted - there was their own tribe, and there were other tribes - and people today, where you can see cliques and groups natu
342.
by rndmize 14y ago
Aspirin has been known since antiquity. Health care generally refers to reasonably complete care with practicing physicians, not a few varieties of antibiotics and painkillers. I don't see your point about visiting a farm, or your point abo
343.
by rndmize 14y ago
All the things you cite as the scary parts of life in the past were after the development of agriculture. The article (and my point) is that life for the average person was better in the millenia prior to that. Indeed, the fact that life wa
344.
by rndmize 14y ago
That you would speak of doing dangerous stuff with tools and a lack of healthcare and follow that with a mention of the Chinese factory... I find ironic. Further, while infant mortality was a problem (and has continued to be up until the la
345.
by rndmize 14y ago
For all our tremendous advances and expansive knowledge, we still have some billions of people that that are malnourished or starving, some that live on less than a dollar a day, some that die by the hundreds of thousands in wars over resou
346.
by rndmize 14y ago
I think not. This is very much in line with what I know from cultural anthropology, and the writer is Jared Diamond, who you might know as the author of "Guns, Germs and Steel" and "Collapse".
347.
by rndmize 14y ago
I don't think you need a new department for that. Take the tax code. Who knows how to exploit the tax code the best? The accountants at the IRS. Have the IRS give an employee a bonus each time they find an exploit and write a report on how
348.
by rndmize 14y ago
> more like an "Oh hey, this was done by John Williams" than something that best fits the film Really? I would be tempted to argue the opposite. The theme for Jaws, for example, is instantly recognizable and well known precisely because
349.
by rndmize 14y ago
Uh, no. There have been multiple lasers built at LLNL of increasing power over the decades - NIF is the replacement for NOVA, which was the replacement for SHIVA - which was used in TRON. Each successive laser has been least an order of mag
350.
by rndmize 14y ago
They have some pictures of the food - http://wolvesmouth.com/blog
351.
by rndmize 14y ago
He also made SpaceChem, which is possibly one of the greatest games of all time. I can't recommend it strongly enough. There's a demo on his site and steam. Go try it. (OK, one caveat - programmers/logic puzzle types may like this game more
352.
by rndmize 14y ago
We live in, presumably, a consumer-spending driven economy. The problem I see is that in the efforts of businesses to become more efficient and to outsource, they're creating a tragedy of the commons effect - if no one is willing to stay in
353.
by rndmize 14y ago
If this is the case, the title of the article strikes me as poorly chosen.
354.
by rndmize 14y ago
I don't think it helps the Republicans that many of the young, tech-savvy people today came of age in the Bush years. I still remember from when I was 13/14 wondering why we were pushing to go to war with Iraq when it had nothing to do with
355.
by rndmize 14y ago
Five hundred years out is an awfully far distance into the future. I could see most of this happening in 200 years, or probably less. One of the problems with making predictions like this is that technology begins to compound and affect its
356.
by rndmize 14y ago
"...Zynga has consistently reported losses since going public, however; news of the CEO dumping his stock is a blow to the company's image. Of all the insiders involved in the deal, Pincus made the most money, netting around $200 million fr
357.
by rndmize 14y ago
Actually, I don't really see the problem with viewing society like a building. We have a constitution, an economic system, and the rule of law, all of which combine to form a societal foundation; this foundation has been flexible enough to
358.
by rndmize 14y ago
"Unsurprising" is the word I would use. Darfur got minimal coverage at the time when mass killings were going on, and Mexico is an even worse story - not only do you have a country approaching a degree of civil war, but the US public is eff
359.
A Country Divided(economist.com)
1 points by rndmize 14y ago|0 comments
360.
by rndmize 14y ago
Perhaps this will lead to a greater interest in statistics and data in general politics and less in pundit opinions. Haha, who am I kidding...

More ›